Falcons Are Making An ABSOLUTELY GENIUS Move

Falcons Are Making An ABSOLUTELY GENIUS Move

All right, let’s talk about the Atlanta Falcons. This is a team coming out of the buy heading into a massive matchup, but they’re quietly making a little bit of news and it’s news for all the right reasons. There’s a lot of buzz and rumors circulating right now, but the Falcons are proving themselves to be smarter than a lot of their competition. Love to see that from Atlanta. We’ll get to all the news and the data aligning with that news in just one second. But first, I’m Nick and this is Saturday Morning Inspection. All right. Right now across the National Football League, the trade deadline rumors, the trade deadline is still gosh, what is it? Almost three and a half weeks away. It’s going to get worse from here, folks. But the trade rumors as we get closer to the deadline are just accelerating across the board. Teams linked to this deal, teams linked to that deal. And obviously, there’s been some big news. And with all the rumors and all the speculation, I like to look at sites and people that just look at cold hard data and try and aggregate all the information because it’s so hard to tell what’s just random speculation and what actually is good source stuff. So, I like the site spot track, right? They’re a salary cap website. They just look at the data and the contracts. They throw together some news information as well, but they just try and look at cold hard numbers and just see who is likely trade targets. And they created this list here. I’m going to pull it up full screen here for you guys right now. There it is. And you can see at the top of the list is a name that you Falcons fans are obviously very familiar with and that of course is quarterback Kurt Cousins, right? He’s been a guy listed as potential trade candidate going on I don’t know 9 10 months at this point but at this point no deal and there’s actually been frankly guys almost no speculation of any deal. Right? Kurt Cousins is obviously a quality starting quarterback or certainly can be. There are some teams out there that could be looking for a quarterback but the Falcons have made the smart move this entire time by holding on to Kurt Cousins as recent reporting has brought to light. So, let’s go and pull up that news here right on the screen. This is a couple days old now, but I think it is relevant. It was Adam Sheper first reporting. Obviously, it’s been confirmed at this point, uh, that the Browns are trading quarterback Joe Flacco and a sixth round pick to the Bengals for a fifth round pick. So, the Browns are sending Flanco and six, and they’re getting a fifth round pick in return, right? So, let’s let’s negate the sixth round pick. Let’s just forget that for a second. The Browns are trading a quart Joe Flanco for a Bengals fifth, right? Forget the six. I know you really can’t, but let’s just make it easy and focus on that. They’re getting a fifth round pick. That’s it for their starting quarterback. And I know Kurt Cousins is better than Flaco. It’s not even close. But what would Kurt Cousins get you? A fourth rounder, maybe? Maybe a fourth and a six, a fourth and a fifth. The reality is, folks, there just isn’t a demand for veteran quarterbacks like there used to be. I don’t frankly understand it. There’s a lot of teams that could use it, but there’s just teams that just don’t want to do it, right? And I think it’s just because teams get burned. You look at the Raiders with Gino Smith so far. I I expect him to turn it around because he’s still a good quarterback or at least was in Seattle. I expect him to do much better the rest of the season, but he hasn’t had a good start to the year, right? Russell Wilson’s already benched, right? Justin Fields, you know, he’s he’s with the Jets. He hasn’t been their biggest prom, but he hasn’t been a superstar either, right? Even Aaron Rogers, who’s playing well for Pittsburgh, isn’t lighting the world on fire. So, the demand for a veteran quarterback, just an addition, just except for maybe Sam Darl in Seattle, just really isn’t working anywhere. And I think that means you really if you’ve got a veteran quarterback and a quality guy, hold on to him, right? You’re not getting any return, right? He’s Kirk Cousins is worth a lot more than a fourth round pick or whatever you would get in this kind of market, right? And that’s always important thing to remember when you’re talking about assets like players. Kurt Cousins is the best backup quarterback in the National Football League by far. The Falcons have the best quarterback room in the NFL right now. Young, talented Michael Penn Jr., he’s just getting better and better. In fact, let me pull up the the Penn Jr. progression chart here, which we’ll talk more about later, but you can see uh just as he progresses, he’s just becoming a better and better passer. That one game against Carolina, obviously the outlier, but Penn Jr.’s getting better. He’s doing that working with Kurt Cousins, who despite not playing and not h being happy uh despite not being happy about not playing, he’s been a great teammate, right? This is a good quarterback room. It’s a good offense that’s getting better. It’s a young offense that’s figuring things out, right? So, why would you upset that apple cart? There’s no indication, there’s no reporting at all that Kirk Cousins is being a bad teammate. He’s not a locker room cancer. You’re not freeing up a lot of cap space. In fact, you’d be taking on a lot of cap space at this point if you traded him right now. You’re not like if you trade him, you’re freeing up 40 million or something like that. You got a lot on the books already. You’re going to have to reevaluate 2026 when the offseason comes. But it’s just the way Kirk Cousins contract is structured, right? Is what it is. So, why would you do it? The answer is you wouldn’t. And thank goodness the Falcons are being smart here. Because the temptation would obviously be to try and get something, right? Oh, there’s there’s a demand. Maybe we can get a fourth rounder for him. Maybe we can get a backup linebacker or something and a fifth rounder or something like that. Maybe we can catch Cleveland being a little bit desperate. But the reality is maybe we can catch, excuse me, catch Cincinnati being a little bit desperate. But the reality is there just isn’t the marketplace for it, right? You don’t sell unless you have to as the market if the market is crashing at anything, right? Anytime there’s a market crash like in the stock market or something like that, what does any smart financial adviser or any investment person ever tell you to do? Don’t sell. Don’t sell when it’s tanking. Don’t do it. Right? Because at that point, emotion is raining. Right? You’re selling something that’s worth a dollar for 75 cents. I know you’re scared it’s going to go drop to be worth 60 cents on the dollar temporarily, but will always bounce back. It always has and always will. Don’t sell. They call it a falling knife. Don’t sell into the falling knife. And the Falcons, to their credit, made the smart move and didn’t. And at the same time, they didn’t upset the apple cart of Penn’s progression. And that’s when we’ll get into these numbers here on the screen. You can see as he got more playing time, obviously his debut when he got his first chance at the action there. We’ll discount that. And you can see those starting in in week uh 16 17 18. Let’s start there. You know, 70 pass rating. 70 pass rating. Week 18, 88 pass rating. Okay. So, trending in the good direction. But this year, 93, 81, the debacle against Carolina, and then 126, right? It’s clear he’s trending. His final three starts last year, you know, if you look at his three starts, they average out to right about 77 pass rating. So far this season, I know the aberration really kind of brings down the numbers across the board here, but overall guys, he’s he’s averaging in the 80s. So even with that 40 45 passer rating, he’s improving. He’s getting better. And if you take away that aberration, it’s significantly higher. Penning Junior’s figuring it out, guys. He’s becoming a quality quarterback. Got a big opportunity this weekend. I’m excited to see what he does, I guess, Monday night. I guess technically not this weekend. But I tell you what, this Falcons team, they’re young. They’re feisty defensively. They got the playmakers. Why do you upset the apple cart? So many GMs just try and be wheeler dealers. They just make deals just to make deals. And sometimes you got to do it, right? You’ve got a big talent deficiency or you’ve got an asset that someone is willing to overpay. You do it. You take advantage of it. That’s what you got to do. But don’t make moves just to make moves, right? We forget these are teams and and locker room culture and vibes and and look at quarterback room, which is the most important room of any team. If Michael Pennix Jr., you know, twists his ankle and is off for two games, the Falcons are like, “We got Kurt Cousins. We’re better off than 99% of the National Football League, right? In the meantime, Kurt Cousins, based on the data, seems to be doing a great job working with Michael Penn Jr. certainly is not hampering his growth. I would argue he’s probably developing it or helping with the development. The Falcons are in a good spot. They’re in a better spot than they ever were with Arthur Smith. They’re trending in a great direction. Don’t upset the Avocart. Credit to the Falcons for not doing that. The temptation, I’m sure, was there. I’m sure they got a call from Cincinnati and said, “Listen, we’ll give you a fourth, maybe even a fifth.” Right? And right there, Fontau could have said, “I’ll take it. I’ll unload it. I’ll just make the deal. Finally make a deal we’ve been trying to make for a long time.” Instead, he was like, “No, I’m not going to sell into a falling knife. We’ve got a good locker room. We got a good culture. Things are trending in the right direction. You give me a big win, a big deal, I’ll do it. But otherwise, we like our team. It’s the smart move to make. Glad to see it in Atlanta.” All right, Falcons fans, we got more to break down today. But first, I want to ask you guys in the comment section below. Obviously, big game prime time this weekend or guess Monday night once again. What are your prediction? What are your thoughts for this game for Atlanta? Obviously, it’s a tough one. It’s a challenge. Not denying that. But I like Atlanta’s odds, right? I like their opportunity here to make a lot of noise. Give us your prediction. Final score of this big match up for the Atlanta Falcons. Put it in the comment section below. And without further ado, let’s get into the matchup against the Buffalo Bills. Let’s uh talk about the analytics first. Uh the matchup predictor is courtesy of ESPN analytics. The Buffalo Bills are currently slated. According to ESPN, they have a 61.0% chance of victory. The Falcons sit at 38.6. There’s a tiny chance 4% chance of a tie, but that’s not a 0% chance as we’ve already seen this season. It actually is very very possible in the National Football League, but the Bills are heavy favorites based on uh the percentage uh ESPN analytics predict uh percentage there uh to go into Atlanta and get a win. When you look at the odds per ESPN sports book, the second half of the screen there, uh you can see the Buffalo Bills again have pretty good odds. They’re 4 and a half point uh road favorites. That’s a pretty big number, guys, if I’m being totally honest. Uh, the overunder has stayed pretty much flat. The odds have not really shifted at all. So, there’s been no real big money pool that’s going behind Buffalo and no big money pool that’s going behind Atlanta at this point. Now, I will throw out this caveat. One of the reasons you get odds this time of year is because you’re still kind of living off of 2024 from the sports books perspective, right? Because they’ve only had four, in some cases, five games worth of data points. So, at this point, they’re like 2024 Bills were better than 2024 Falcons. We’re going to keep riding with what it is, right? we’re just we’re just we’re just going to keep that going on even though it’s 2025. That’s a lot of what you see and that’s another reason why you don’t see big shifts in the spread because there’s no pools of money coming in because it’s too early in the season to tell who’s really good. Even though we think the Bills are good, the reality is they barely beat the New Orleans Saints. That was a feisty game. Yeah, they handled the Jets pretty easily. But the Jets are not a very good football team. The the Miami Dolphins was a close game down to the wire, right? That the Bills have beaten a lot of one-win teams, right? Which again, to the credit, you play who you play, right? So, it’s one of those things where, listen, you don’t have a choice in your schedule, but the Bills haven’t beaten anybody impressive at all. The Falcons are by far the best team the Bills have played yet, right? And the Falcons, you know, they’ve had some ups and downs. The dud against Carolina really stinks, but listen, they took Tampa down to the wire. Tampa’s a good team, right? They really manhandled Minnesota physically, and Minnesota’s a physical football team. They have issues at the quarterback position, but the Falcons beat Minnesota by being much, much more physical. Same thing with Washington. And I know Washington was without their quarterback Jane Daniels, but the Falcons were the better team. That was clear watching the football game. So, it depends on what Falcons team shows up and what Bills team shows up. But if you look at the competition so far this season, this Falcons team, they’ve played good teams already and they’ve done a pretty good job against them. The Bills have played one good team and that was the New England Patriots at home, a young Patriots team. And and I don’t even know how good the Patriots are. The Patriots lost to the Raiders for example. They they look bad against the Steelers. I don’t really know how good the Patriots are. I don’t know how good the Bills are, but right now everyone’s hyping up the Bills like it’s 2024. And look, Josh Allen is still superb and they still have good players, but I don’t know. I really don’t know. I think they’re taking advantage of a really weak division in AFC East where the Jets are bad and the Dolphins are bad and the Patriots just are are kind of up and coming, but they’re not quite good yet. I think this is a Bills team that’s a little overhyped, and I think the Falcons have a great opportunity here to get a massive home victory, especially coming out of the buy. I always love I always love home team out of buy. That’s sort of like a guarantee if you’re gonna get if you’re in a pick them environment. Home team out of the buy is always a great way to go. Especially when you have a quarterback that’s playing well. Again, I’m going to go back to that metric here real quick. You can see the the improvement right first week 16 last year 734 week 17 715 889 finish out the season 932 85 dud against Carolina but we put them in the rearview mirror with a 126 grade against a pretty feisty Washington defense if I’m being totally honest. So quarterback playing well, good running game, offensive line, young defenders, playmakers flying around all all over the place. Ain’t going to be any fear in Jaylen Walker, ain’t going to be any fear in Ruk Auroro or James Pierce Jr. any of these guys, right? They’re coming out there with Reckless abandoned. They’re excited for this matchup. So this is a Falcons team that’s young, that’s feisty. I like their chances, right? I think the oddsmakers and the percentage uh here pure ESPN analytics, I think it’s underelling the Falcons here. I like Atlanta here. I think people view this as an upset. I think the Falcons are a lot better than people think. I think the Bills may not be as good as people think. And I think the squad from Atlanta, they send a powerful statement Monday night.

The Atlanta Falcons took a lot of heat a few years ago with some of their decision making. But the Falcons look really smart now as they continue to make good moves. The Falcons are very quickly becoming one of the. more intelligent teams in football. Fans of the Atlanta Falcons should be excited by this news.

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